Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys ‘not looking at free agency to fill voids’ on roster
After a flurry of moves by the Dallas Cowboys on Tuesday that seem uncharacteristic to how they’ve operated in past offseasons, there was some indication that Jerry Jones may be gearing up to make some moves in the upcoming free agency period.
Locking in starting defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa on a four-year, $80 million deal, getting deals done with all three exclusive rights free agents and restructuring CeeDee Lamb’s deal to free up $20 million in cap space allowed the Cowboys to get a head start on what could be a busy offseason in 2025.
Could be? Should be?
Either way, Jones, the Cowboys owner and general manager, stated Wednesday that the Cowboys free agency philosophy hasn’t changed despite more activity being shown ahead of the start of the new league year on March 12.
“I don’t think aggressive is the right word,” Jones said when describing how the Cowboys could approach free agency. “I’m not looking at free agency as a place to fill voids, not if you include what might work for us in the draft and what we’re doing with our own roster relative to who we want to sign.”
That roster includes additional internal free agents such as cornerback Jourdan Lewis, running back Rico Dowdle and defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence. With big contracts already on the docket, such as Dak Prescott’s four-year, $240 million deal signed last September, Jones is keeping his free agency attention in-house.
“I think the nature of it is that it’s a part of last year’s plan,” Jones said. “When we made the big commitment to Dak, what we had to do was think ahead from within of how to build around the commitment. This is not a year to rebuild at all. We made our big commitment to Dak, then the areas that we were in, we had to depend on retaining our own homegrown guys.”
On Wednesday, the Cowboys restructured Prescott’s deal to free up $36.6 million in cap space for the 2025 season, moving the team’s total cap space to a little more than $54.3 million with one week until free agency begins.
Another move that could help Dallas free up even more space is to sign an extension with star defensive end Micah Parsons. As Parsons has said on multiple occasions, he has a strong desire to get a deal done early to allow the team to bring back internal free agents and to be players in the overall open market.
While it sounds positive on the surface, Jones sees it as part of the negotiation.
“Those are a part of his cards,” Jones said. “To talk about time and to be available for time, those are part of the cards to talk about going ahead [and getting a deal done] now. Usually when you don’t do [the deal] now, it’s because of the amount or the terms. That is a process that does get narrow as you go along. We get criticized because we wait until we get to the end, it just happens that way.”
Part of that criticism stems from last offseason when extensions with CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott saw both not land a deal until just before the season began. In Prescott’s case, it came literally hours before the season kicked off while in his hotel room in Cleveland.
Even though getting those deals done earlier would have freed up cap space for the team to use last offseason, Jones doesn’t see it as something that impacted the way the team planned to do business.
“We want a deal that would allow you to have room,” he said. “I don’t believe in any way that not signing Dak and not signing Lamb hurt us in any way last year on what we did in free agency. We had available dollars to do what we wanted to do. Apart from having a seven-win season, which is a disruptor and really one that should put you on the edge of your seat, what we’re doing now is what we were planning on doing a year ago.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 1:53 PM.
